Vale Gordon Goodwin.

[Allan Black]

In 1989 my wife and I took our 2 young daughters to Disneyland where I soon noticed a street band of 4 players, walking around and stopping every now and then to play a few Disney numbers for the crowd.

And the trumpet, tenor sax, trombone and baritone sax musical arrangements were very good, so good in fact, I arranged to meet my family later and a couple of fans and I followed them around for 1/2 an hour just listening to them at each stop. That was Gordon Goodwins first job and I think he wrote those arrangements and played the tenor sax there. I should have asked him.

He subsequently went on to form his Big Phat Band, they released 11 Cds and won three Daytime Emmy Awards, four Grammy Awards, and 25 Grammy nominations for his compositions and arrangements.

He became a favourite bandleader of mine and many other fans worldwide. He led his Big Phat Band for many years, and started writing for Warner Bros cartoons regularly in 1969, He probably was in the same Warners studio I was in in 1996.

In May 2014 Gordon and his Big Phat Band flew L.A. to Brisbane Australia, then to Adelaide then took a coach to Mt. Gambier to play in the Generations in Jazz festival on the weekend organised by Australian multi instrumentalist James Morrison. I’ve worked with James, he’s just the persuasive man to pull a thing like that off. It was a great success.

But on the way they first came to Sydney and played concerts in the Chatswood Concourse theatre, about 30 minutes from where I live. I didn’t know that and I m-i-s-s-e-d them.

However tragically, 8th December 2025, Gordon Goodwin died from prostrate cancer. Musicians and fans around the world were shocked and are still devastated. Individually here’s some of the world’s best instrumentalists …